Erik went to the table and poured a drink. Kneeling beside the old man, he put an arm around his shoulders and held the glass to his lips. Aristotle drank a little, and coughed, and Erik watched him, looking at the brown sunspots on his forehead where the fine hair was receding, the deep wrinkles around the mouth.
‘But you need me,’ Erik said.
Aristotle suddenly gave a bleak little cackle of laughter.
‘You think I need you to make my death easier, is that it?’ he asked. ‘You are a fool, Erik. What is Greece with so much evil in the world? What are these stupid people that you want to die for them? They will never be willing to die for you. When you are gone they will forget you and go on playing their stupid games, pretending to be soldiers. Go back to your cripple, help him. Pah.’
Erik sat down on the floor beside him. Aristotle considered him with a smile.
‘Erik,’ he said softly. ‘Erik, if you betray me, I’ll kill you.’
‘You will send someone to do it for you.’
‘No, no, I shall do it.’
They fell silent, more from exhaustion than a lack of things to say. I saw dismay settle between them like a black and monstrous bird. They gazed through the porthole beside my left ear at the blue blind sky, two sad souls awaiting a saviour whom they knew would never come. I walked on tiptoe to the cabin door, and closed it softly behind me.
Fang was gone. An empty beer bottle stood on the deck, a somehow selfconscious relic of his presence. I stepped up to the pier, and was half-way across the quay before I discovered in my hand the whiskey glass, with the frozen heart of an ice cube melting in its amber depths. Twelve bells came down over the village, announcing noon.
I went back to my room. I had a visitor. Andreas sat coiled in my armchair, with a hand under his chin. His eyes were closed. He opened them and looked at me. I stood just inside the door. Through the window I caught a glimpse of a fat man in a bloody apron emptying a bucket of offal into a barrel down at the back of the café. Andreas coughed, cutting a little nick into the silence.
‘Have you seen Erik?’ he asked.
‘How did you get in here?’
I wonder if any answer ever really satisfies that particular question. One slender finger snaked out from under his chin and pointed past my shoulder.
‘Through the door.’
‘I don’t remember inviting you,’ I snapped.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You didn’t. I thought Erik would be here.’
I crossed the room and sat down on the bed with my legs folded under me.
‘Erik has met a friend,’ I said sweetly. ‘It was very touching to watch.’
Andreas smiled, and bowed his head.
‘So Aristotle has arrived,’ he murmured.
I was silent, grinding my teeth, and then I said,
‘You’re a clever bastard, aren’t you? Know everything, don’t you? Well tell me something, who is this Aristotle?’
‘A colonel, in the army.’
‘The guy who killed our good friend Black is working for him. You knew that too, I suppose? I’ll tell you something, I begin to wonder about you two, you and Erik. Listen to me, damn it.’
He was thinking about something else, drumming a finger on the bridge of his nose and looking through the window at the distant hills. With a corner of his mind receiving me, he asked,
‘What do you wonder?’
‘I wonder about this movement you’re supposed to be setting up. I wonder if this refusal to give me information is just a subtle way of making a fool of me. I wonder how valuable this document really is. And I wonder what you’re covering up with all this melodrama. That, for a start, is what I wonder.’
I picked up a box from the table and began to twist it in my ringers. Andreas closed his eyes again. He said,
‘Have you ever wondered why people were willing to kill for that docu—’
‘Why this Aristotle freak was willing to kill for it; come on, let’s start putting names to these vague devils you hint at.’
He grinned, and went on imperturbably,
‘And have you ever wondered —’
I would not let him escape.
‘Listen, answer the question.’
‘What question?’
‘Was it Aristotle who killed Black?’
‘But Mr White, you were there.’
‘For Christ’s sake.’
He sighed.
‘You have a very simple mind, Mr White. You deal too much in … what would I call it? … Too much in absolutes. You see someone murdered, you discover that the murderer works for someone, ergo, that someone — all right, don’t shout again, Aristotle, there, I have named him. You decide that Aristotle must be the real force behind the killing. Is that logical?’
‘It’s not illogical. But all right, all right, tell me, why did Fang want to kill him?’
‘Who?’
‘Black.’
‘Him, ah. But again you have leapt to a conclusion. Did I say that Aristotle was not the one who ordered the killing?’
‘Jesus.’
‘But don’t worry about these things, my friend. Everything will be explained. You have one task, to wait; to be patient and to wait. That’s all we ask you to do.’
‘But —’
‘Well, here, think on this. Why is it that no one outside this island seems to have heard about the murder? You saw the newspapers. Not a word about the affair.’
‘Protecting the tourist industry. Look, I want facts, dates, figures. I want the truth. I can afford to make demands, and don’t forget it, friend.’
‘But Mr White, Mr White, what is the truth?’
I flung the box down on the bed and glared at him. He had such a tender, attentive smile, his eyes moist with concern.
‘I want an approximation of the truth,’ I snarled.
He shrugged, which action, with his shape, was impressive.
‘Ask Erik,’ he said. ‘He will tell you all you want to know … perhaps.’
‘Erik is too busy just now.’
‘Mr White, why do you dislike me?’
‘I think we had this conversation before.’
‘But you gave no answer then either.’
‘No, I suppose I didn’t.’
A web of frost laced the air between us. Then I laughed, and shook my head, and heard my voice repeat an echo.
‘Useless,’ I said. ‘Useless.’
Andreas leaned forward in the chair, considered the folded flower of his fists, and, suddenly brisk, he said,
‘The reason I came here, Mr White, was to apologize to you.’
‘Apologize for what?’
‘I called you a coward. I’m sorry. Also I wish to say goodbye. I leave tonight for Athens. Erik will be travelling with me. At least, that was his plan.’
I sniggered.
‘He won’t be leaving just yet, not if I know anything.’
‘Mr White, what do you know about such things?’
He left the chair and shuffled about the room, looking at this and that. By the table he halted and glanced at the jumble of papers lying there.
‘This is your book, yes?’ he asked. ‘What is it called?’
‘It’s called I Was Just The Gipsy In My Mother’s Soul.’
He nodded. What a sense of humour the man had. He bent closer to the table in an effort to decipher my scrawl. I looked at his hump and had a vision of him wooing a widow over the brand-new boards of a coffin.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ I mused. ‘The rash of lechers with yachts there is about these days.’
He lurched away from the table, knocked against a chair, and went to the window where he stood with his back, that back, turned resolutely toward me. Twist that knife.
‘Of course, a colonel in the —’
‘Stop,’ he said.
I stopped, and wrenched at one of my fingers until it hurt. A turkey cackled somewhere, and was joined in song by a chorus of its mates. A girl laughed down in the street. From the kitchens below, a sniff of rancid fat slithered in through the window. Andreas said,